1. Field
One or more embodiments of the present disclosure relate to methods and apparatuses for analyzing elastography of tissue of a human or animal subject using ultrasound waves.
2. Description of the Related Art
To diagnose a disease, establish a treatment plan, or evaluate a treatment progress using ultrasound images in medical institutions, a medical practitioner reads ultrasound images of a patient, which are displayed on a monitor, to observe states or sequential histological changes of tumorous or cancerous tissue. However, since ultrasound images are read by a medical practitioner with the naked eye, the same ultrasound image may be analyzed differently depending on the angle of view of the medical practitioner, thereby making the potential for a measurement error large. In addition, occasionally, a medical practitioner incorrectly recognizes abnormal tissue, such as tumorous or cancerous tissue in ultrasound images as normal tissue, that is tissue without tumors or cancer.
However, recently, Computer-Aided Diagnosis (CAD) systems primarily discerning medical images, such as ultrasound images, Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) images, and Computed Tomography (CT) images, and indicating the presence or absence of abnormal tissue, a location of the abnormal tissue, and the like to a medical practitioner have been developed. The CAD systems, which detect abnormal tissue by processing the presence or absence of abnormal tissue in a medical image, a size of the abnormal tissue, a location of the abnormal tissue, and the like using a computer system and provide a detection result to a medical practitioner to aid image diagnosis by the medical practitioner, may be used in combination with medical devices, such as an ultrasound device, an MRI device, and a CT device.